Lenovo T61p - No Display

Hi,

I've had my Lenovo T61p for about 3 years now. When I was watching a video a couple of days ago, suddenly the screen got corrupted. And now, I cannot see anything on the display, not even the boot screen. Connecting an external monitor also does not help.

But, the laptop seems to work just fine. I can ssh into it and do pretty much everything! Could this be due to fried GPU? If so, can I replace it? Since I am still in grad school I really do not want to spend a ton of money on a new laptop. I am looking for the cheapest solution possible.

Thanks!

 

From your descriptions, it would seem the GPU is at fault here: the Quadro card in the T61p is one of those affected by Nvidia's GPU manufacturing defect in the GeForce 8x00 cards.

The GPU is not replaceable short of replacing the entire motherboard, which is not a very economic proposition. You could buy a used Thinkpad: The Tx00 generation is very affordable now, and many Tx00 models with integrated graphics as well. See another poster's questions, they may be relevant to you.

Alternatively, you could also check out the Lenovo Outlet and Dell Outlet for discounted business-grade laptops.

 

or you can try to bake it .. search some youtube videos of how to bake your GPU - it requires some work but is free and sometimes even works, lol.

in general, look for another laptop

 

That is classic Nvidia failure. I would advising pulling your drive and purchasing a new laptop, there is NO fix for it besides properly fixing it by reballing it and reflowing. See if you can get a shop to do it with leaded solder, alot more forgiving then unleaded solder which partially caused the issue.

 

Ah well... I guess I'll buy a new one. Thanks for your input!